It should not need demonstration that such sexual malpractices on children may have serious consequences for these latter. A girl may suffer most severely, alike morally and socially, even though defloration has not been effected. It is quite conceivable that in such a way a girl may be brought to prostitution. Certain investigators have studied the question at what age defloration had been effected in women leading a life of prostitution, and have ascertained that in many cases this had taken place in childhood. Martineau[118] reports cases in which defloration had been effected at the age of nine or ten years. Experience teaches that boys also, especially when they have been seduced by sexual inverts, are very apt to adopt a life of prostitution. It must also be remembered that girls may occasionally become pregnant and give birth to a child even before they have themselves passed the years of childhood--another source of social danger. In addition, we have to reckon with dangers to physical health; among these we have the direct consequences of premature misuse of the genital organs, and, above all, the danger of venereal infection. In a great many cases, sexual offences against children are brought to light only when, on examining the child, gonorrhoeal or syphilitic infection is disclosed. Many authorities hold that the superstitious hope of curing venereal disease by sexual intercourse with an innocent child, is a comparatively frequent source of such infection in children. Freud, to whose views I have referred several times before, believes that sexual attempts on children may give rise in the latter to severe neuroses--an idea which forms an important part of the etiological system put forward by this author.